Hogwarts Legacy: The Dark Veins In Time

London Bridge is Falling Down

**Could it be - two chapters posted so close together!? Enjoy lovelies!**
**Some steamy adult themes, implied drug abuse, and brief mention of unaliving ahead.**

AESOP POV

"You're going to put a trench in the floor, Ace. Come sit down already." Clara beckoned me with a yawn and pat in the open space on the bench next to her. "It's so damn early, we could've stayed in bed for easily another hour."

Stay in bed? Sit? I couldn't sit. 

"He's late. He knows I can't stand it when he's late." I said hotly, continuing to pace my 'trench' into the marble floor of the atrium within the Ministry of Magic, "I needed Isaac here before the session started. Not during, not after, before."

It was just past nine-thirty in the morning, Clara and I arriving at Ministry Headquarters just after eight o'clock, right when the day started for most of the building's lower level office employees. The American auror clearly wasn't accustomed to waking up at a decent hour as I had to physically lift her from my bed and slide her into the bathtub myself, a slight miscalculation on my part as the plan to force her to be ready for the day turned into my being in the bath with her. I had to admit it had been an unexpectedly wonderful evening, despite the nagging concern I had over having not been with a woman in years. Clara was as sensual and attentive as I remembered. We spent most of the time with her completely in command by riding me more times than was probably deemed normal, bringing up old memories filled with some of the very few regrets I have in life that lead me to ask myself why I hadn't left Britain when I had the perfect opportunity to back then...

Mm, questions for another day. Clara was staying in London alongside Reginald and his charge, Levi until this whole debacle with the Red-Devil Phantom Army is resolved, leaving plenty of time for me to muse on the mistakes of my younger self.

A set of heavy footsteps came treading down the grand hallway and the two of us turned our attentions to it, but it was not the man I needed to see coming towards us. It was one of my oldest friends and former mentor that now had a seat upon the Wizegamot, Gerald Hardragon - a man I remembered to be considered tall, dark and handsome now shrunk, grey, and stout. He had been the one to accept the auror application I sent in just weeks before I graduated Hogwarts, even personally attending the closing ceremonies to meet with my parents and deliver the good news. His trainings were brutal and always straight to the point, leaving no room for rose colored spectacles to view the world from. I owed him everything.

"Aesop!" The now funny little man smiled as he got close enough for a quick embrace, then bowing towards Clara. "And our lovely American auror. Nice to see you in a proper dress instead of cracking the necks of my young auror trainees trying to catch an eyeful of your arse in those leathers you had on previously."

As I said - brutal and always straight to the point. I had reluctantly asked Clara to wear a dress while at the Ministry Headquarters, at the very least for today since she wished to join me in the courts. The members of the Wizegamot were mostly elder witches and wizards, stuck in many of their old fashioned ways, and her preference of wearing extremely tight fitting clothing over the very prominent curves of her body was.. distracting.

"And who's to say I still won't crack their necks, hm? Clothes don't make the woman you know." Clara snipped at him with a wink.

"Couldn't have said it better myself, Ms. Taylor!" Isaac exclaimed, coming from who knows where all of sudden, a solid thirty-four minutes late. His hair was tied back sloppily and buttons mismatched under his tailcoat - he was at the Kingsman's, of course. "Though I rather prefer my women with less layers on. Good morning, everyone! Lovely dress, Ms. Taylor."